A dinosaur-like fossil discovered in China is providing paleontologists with clues about the evolution of birds. The unusual bird named Fujianvenator prodigiosus was found in China's Fujian province ...

The woodpecker is a unique bird species that has gone through some mysteriously acquired adaptations since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Fossils tell us, without any explanations of course (because ...

Few subjects in evolutionary theory have posed such intriguing puzzles for so long as the origin of birds. Evidence of avian beginnings has been elusive in the fossil record because birds' light, ...

Birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived until today. About 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary, a mass extinction event destroyed all non-avian dinosaurs, ...

Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve ...

New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as birds. New Cornell ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Researchers at Rice University have uncovered new insights into the evolution of bird behavior, revealing why certain mating systems persist while others disappear over time. In a recent paper ...

Scientists have long wondered whether evolution would follow the same path if history had a chance for a “do-over.” New research suggests that it does, when it comes to the brain and its regulation of ...